Sunday, May 19, 2013

Life has been crazy and unfortunately for me (as for many of you) scrapbooking is often the first thing that gets put on the back burner when other things pop up. I never did get the SOTM up for April, so it has now become May's Sketch of the Month - and late in May at that!

I am enjoying the challenge of coming up with layouts based on my easy 1-2-3 Formula...a layout that uses 1 piece of double-sided patterned paper, 2 pieces of cardstock and only 3 cuts! This month's sketch is a grid-style format with 4 x 6 photos interspersed with 4 x 6 blocks of paper.

And here's my layout based on the sketch...

This is a great layout for using up a lot of 4 x 6 photos in landscape mode. I seem to have a lot of these because I often forgot to turn my camera to portrait orientation. The photos in my layout are from a car show we attended last summer and every single picture I took that day was in landscape orientation!

I used two sheets of gray cardstock as my base along with one sheet of subtly patterned green/arrow striped paper from CM's It's a Boy! Stack Pack.

Here is the cutting diagram for the layout. After you make your three cuts you'll have a 4 x 12 piece of paper
leftover that you can use to cut your title letters or punch shapes
from. To complete my own layout I trimmed a couple of 1/4' strips from this leftover piece to add as a "ribbon" feature above the top row of pictures and paper blocks. Then I cut my title letters freehand after simply drawing them on the leftover paper and punched the stars with a retired CM punch. A few dots with my journaling pen echoed the dots on the patterned paper and polished off the layout.

Remember, the magic of these 1-2-3 layouts is in the double sided
paper...after cutting you simply flip over some of the pieces to perform
double duty and add extra interest to your page.

If you use the sketch to make a layout and share it on your blog, please include a link in the comment section below so we can see what you did with it! I hope you have some fun scrapbooking with this sketch this month!

I took this photo of hubby and my younger son Sam a few years back as they watched my older son Grayson on a ride at our local amusement park. But, they appear to have their faces lifted to enjoy the warming rays of the sun! Either way, I love to "soak up" photos of these guys...I can't get enough of Sam's chubby cheeks!

Whoah...I seem to have lost a lot of time, energy and mojo lately! But I have another layout over at the Scrap It With a Song blog and to share with you here!

We are finishing up with the April Fools theme with the song, "Foolish Games" by Jewel. I took inspiration from the title of the song, although my happy layout certainly doesn't reflect the theme of relationship angst in the song!

Here's the back story: my youngest son Sam has Autism Spectrum Disorder and one of the things he (and many kiddos with Autism) has trouble with is engaging with others in imaginative and pretend play. As part of his therapy we had a play therapist come to our home every weekday for about seven months. Her job was to play! Some days were better than others, but Sam definitely made gains in his play skills (yes, believe it or not, play does involve skills!) and we have seen an improvement in his desire to engage with others (as opposed to playing alone).

I had snapped a few photos of Amy and Sam playing, knowing that I would want to document this phase of his therapy. The title of our inspiration song - "Foolish Games" - made me think of some of the silly games we played. I found these photos with bright happy colors and created this digital layout...

About Me

Hi! I'm a wife and mom of two busy boys. I'm am art teacher by day and a crafty homebody by night. I love being at home or at our little cabin in the woods, organizing, crafting, cooking or baking and trying to make the crazy job of being a mom a little more creative and fun. Join me for my adventures in family life!